Today we’d like to introduce you to Paul Jerry.
Hi Paul, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
When I was younger, I would always act like the people I saw on T.V. I would imitate their voices and learn their lines. That was fun! That’s when I started to do plays at my church for the Christmas holidays. I always got to portray Jesus during these drive-thru theatre segments. As I got older, I started participating in various stage plays at school, from Julius Caesar to Langston Hughes. I also started doing morning recap on the school news channel, which included sports updates, important school updates, and various community events. Once I found my rhythm, more people began to gravitate to my segment and appreciated what I brought to the show. While I was pursuing my acting craft, I started taking computer graphics classes to build upon my artistic abilities. During class, I would always draw on my assignments when something creative came to my mind. I would sketch things such as Looney Tunes, Marvel, Dragon Ball Z.
As time passed by, I started receiving various awards for my art, and the plays continued to increase in number. Before attending the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, I went to John Casablanca’s Modeling and Acting School with hopes of making it big. Ten weeks later, I received a certificate of completion with no agent or manager. I was disappointed, but I charged the 3k I spent to the game. I took a year off after graduation from High School to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Whether I wanted to go to college or a trade school. Since I played sports in college, I looked for a way to stay active during this time away from school so I started boxing in my free time. I actually started to get really good at it because I had a wrestling background. In between going to auditions and filming, I was in the boxing gym. Due to the fact I always wanted to keep my face pretty for my photoshoots and filming, I had really good defense in the boxing ring. After my first couple of fights, I went to the “Ringside World Championships” and placed 2nd. A lot of people did not even expect me to go that far because I was a fresh boxer, but like my art and acting, I was committed. I won the State Finals at the Golden Gloves boxing tournament. The year I took off from going to college, I gained a lot of confidence and learned the true meaning of perseverance. Waking up at 6 in the morning to run miles down the highway, coming back home to work on my art for my clients, and then traveling to auditions and getting ready to be on set.
In 2009, due to my dancing abilities, I received the opportunity to perform on one of BET’s top shows at the time, 106th & Park “Wild Out Wednesdays” as a dancer/performer. This was a major accomplishment for me, and it was my first time being featured on national television. In the fall of 2009, I started my freshman year at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. When I arrived there, I immediately started searching for the TV Production department and the drama society. I found the TV production department and started my own TV Show called “How You Rep?” It was a show that showcased what students did on campus. After starting my own show, I met the director of the Drama Society, by the name of “Della Dameron Johnson” aka “Mama Dee.” After meeting Mama Dee, I started taking classes to further my acting skills. We studied a lot of work from August Wilson and one of my first plays was fences, where I portrayed the son “Corey.” During that time, a lot happened! I booked a Lawrence Chevrolet commercial and a voting commercial for the Obama administration. It was during my sophomore year of college when I realized that engineering wasn’t my passion, it was art, and I wanted to pursue it. I spoke with my advisor and told him that I wanted to switch my major from Civil Engineering to Applied Design with a concentration in a graphical illustration.
Around that same time, my mother passed away from Breast Cancer, and I didn’t know what to do. I was shocked, scared, and nervous all at the time. I kept thinking to myself, God, why did you take my mother from me? She was the neighborhood mom that everybody loved. Thoughts of quitting college kept running through my head, and my friends kept telling me, “Paul, if you quit, everything you’ve ever worked for will be in vain, and you’re going to do your mom a disservice.” I started to get back focused again and returned to school three weeks later. The pain of her being gone still made me upset, so every time I would get down or angry, I went to the boxing gym to release all of my stress. Boxing helped me out a lot, and the more I talked about the death of my mom, the more it helped other people who were going through the same thing. After my mom passed away, my main focus was just to make her proud and achieve in any way that I could; whether it was a movie, commercial, boxing championship or an art gallery.
College really helped me to perfect my artistic abilities, and it taught me things I didn’t know, from color blending to the anatomy of the human body. As I perfected my craft, I started to present my art in more galleries and act on bigger stages. After graduation, there wasn’t a great need for artists like they are now, and my acting didn’t take off the way I wanted, so I started working with the police department and became an officer. I was a cop by day and an actor/artist/by night.
At that same time, I was invited to fight against Team Ireland in Washington D.C. for an international boxing tournament. I was the first boxer from team USA to win in the competition. After that fight, I was invited to be a part of the first D.C. traveling team to travel to Belfast, Ireland to compete against Team Ireland on their own soil. Gervonta Davis and I were on the same team when we went to fight in Ireland. I was able to fight in 2016 at the National Golden Gloves boxing tournament that was hosted in Salt Lake City, Utah. A lot of spectators in that arena believed that I was cheated out of my fight against a boxer from the Rocky Mountain region. That boxer only won because his coach was in charge of the tournament. Watching the politics in the boxing industry made me want to focus solely on my acting career and my art business. This pushed me to start my own art business titled “Pro Vision Designs,” where I designed graphics, custom portraits, murals, and custom shoes. It also pushed me to go harder towards my acting career.
I landed my first notable acting role as an extra role on the “Netflix” series “House of Cards”. I was a protester at the beginning of season 5, episode 5. You can catch me yelling out in front of Kevin Spacey, “Not my President!!” I wanted more speaking roles, so I started taking more classes with my acting Coach, Percy Thomas. He took me through a lot of scene study classes where we analyzed each scene from start to finish. After taking his acting classes, I performed in two of his plays, a slave by the name of Hercules in “Zelma” and a young crack fiend by the name of Joe in “The Cock”. It wasn’t until 2017 when I got my “chops” together and decided to switch over from theatre into film. I auditioned for an extra role in the student film “Second Chance” at Towson University. Surprisingly to me, after my performance, the director offered me the lead role in the film as “Thomas,” a young man who got caught up in the wrong crowd. Acting in that film opened up more opportunities for me including, playing a detective in “Camp Wilson” and a police officer in “Broken Exchange Uncoded.”
I started taking more classes with different coaches in different cities from Baltimore to Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They pushed me to be better at cold reading and self-taping techniques during my auditions. A week after taking a class with my Pennsylvania acting coach, I booked a principal role in a Campbell’s Soup commercial that was filmed in Philadelphia and New Jersey.
At the same time, my art business began to take off, and my clientele started to increase. I was painting murals in stores, designing more custom shoes, making album covers for Apple Music, and even designing logos for Facebook. Every painting or picture that I did pushed me in ways that I never knew. Now I have a waiting list for people when they want to get artwork done. Look at GOD! Won’t He Do it!!!
As far as my acting, I have grown so much in my craft! One of my most recent films, “A Worthy Punishment,” is currently on “Amazon Prime,” and I just finished filming a romantic comedy titled “Thanksgiving Roast.” That film will be dropping on Amazon Prime this fall on November 2nd. A lot of people are going to be shocked at my character because I’m not playing the typical young teen, detective, or police officer; I’m playing the family crackhead named “Bubu”.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Honestly, it has not been a smooth road. I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs. A lot of people tried to use me and take advantage of me. Certain acting coaches would have me pay to take classes in hopes of signing with an agent, but it never happened. In this business, you will receive a lot of “No’s” before you receive a “Yes,” but that one “Yes” will make you forget about all of the “No’s” you ever received. Also, the constant submissions to casting directors take work and money. Making sure you have the right lighting, backdrop, and clothing that compliments your skin costs. You can’t just use a ring light in your video. You need professional lighting. It’s a lot of trial and error, but the more you learn, the better you become, and you’re more equipped with the right set of tools to succeed.
Most people think acting is easy, but it takes a lot of work, mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. Even though I was excited to book the commercial with Campbell’s soup, it was a lot of work running for 8 hours per day, for three days, in below-freezing temperatures. When you see the finished product of a commercial, you won’t even realize how many takes it took for the director to perfect each scene. Patience is KEY! The road has not been easy. Sometimes you might audition for a role, book the role, then get a call from the director or the producer that they decided to go with someone else, so you have to always be ready for the unexpected. I tell upcoming actors, “Don’t be so quick to believe every promise someone tells you, whether they are an acting coach, producer or director; because a lot of people get disappointed from promises that never happen. Wait until the ink is signed on the contract to start celebrating, and even after you sign a contract, you still have to perform and carry out your duty.
Losing my mother to breast cancer and my little brother to suicide must have been the toughest experiences I ever went through. There is no person out there like your mother, and I can still hear her voice talking to me about being her “Precious Angel,” and thinking about her smile always brings me to tears. With my little brother, I had no idea what he was going through mentally in his life. Everything I do now is for them. My dad is currently in a nursing home, and he’s been in that home for about 14 years now. An O.G. once told me we don’t ask for life to get easier. We ask for God to make us stronger. When you really think about it, life never gets easier it really gets worse. However, as you get stronger, you adapt to the circumstances and adversity that is placed in front of you.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a visual artist/specialist and an actor. I create art on almost any canvas, a pair of shoes, a wall, paper, wood. You name it. I design custom portraits, murals, flyers, album covers, etc. What makes me different from everybody else is most artists can only do one form of art, I can do it all. From painting and drawing to creating digital art and vectors. Most people ask me, “Paul, what don’t you do?” I specialize in murals, portraits, and digital graphics. I just finished a mural for an Argentina cafe in Alexandria, Virginia, and I’m currently illustrating a children’s book by a black-owned author. My most notable accomplishment for my art is recently winning the 2021 Crisfield Arts & Entertainment mural contest.
My designs will be featured on the communities’ new tennis court and their basketball court. As an actor, I’m mostly known for my role as “Thomas” in Second Chance on YouTube and as a “Police Officer” in “A worthy Punishment” on Amazon Prime. What makes me different from a lot of actors is my adjustment to my environment. I specialize in improvisation, accents, and sense memory. I have a great Spanish and British accent. Sometimes people think that I’m from Puerto Rico and sometimes they think that I’m from Wells UK. Having the ability to make someone laugh and cry takes a lot of creativity because you have to evoke real emotions through Pathos and Ethos, which my acting coach, Percy Thomas, instilled in me, I am most proud of booking my first feature-length film, “Thanksgiving Roast” that will appear on Amazon Prime this fall. I told God last year that I wanted to be a part of a bigger film this year, and he blessed me with this role right before the start of the new year.
Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
Covid has taught me that you have to take risks, and anyone can become an entrepreneur. You just have to have a plan A, B, C, D, and E. If you don’t have a plan, in that order, you’re going to get F’d. Lol.
Before Covid, my art was doing great but it exceeded well beyond my vision, including my Sip-and-paint classes. The first Sip-and-Paint class, I had about 30 people in one room “physically”. After Covid, I had to switch my classes from physical to virtual. I noticed that during my Instagram live sessions, there were close to 50 people tuning in to my painting classes. This showed me that there can be an increase in my clientele because my classes went from physical to virtual and because the classes were virtual, people could paint from the confinement of their homes. This saved me money on products because the participants are buying the paint, the brushes, the water, the pallet and the canvas.
Covid also taught me that you have to have more than one source of income because at any moment, everything you worked for could be lost. I started investing in stocks during Covid and also looking into cryptocurrencies.
In addition, the number one thing Covid taught me was that “Life is very short,” and you have to give people their flowers while they are still here. I’ve lost friends and loved ones to COVID; and a lot of my friends have lost their parents to COVID just within the last few months. My father caught COVID last year, but he beat the symptoms in about two weeks after quarantining. I wish I could say the same for everyone else, but the virus has a different effect on people’s bodies.
Pricing:
- Paintings start at $400
- Custom Shoes start at $350
- Graphics start at $175
Contact Info:
- Email: pvdesignz@gmail.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/paulcjerry
- Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/paul.jerry1
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2vbns5CaUg
- Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9795457/
Image Credits
Mark Hill – (Mark Hill Photography) and Brandon Cooper (Abstrak Media).
